By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture - Every now and then, when I have trouble choosing a topic for commentary, I consult the CatholicCulture archives, to see what I was writing five or ten or fifteen years ago around this time of year. So it was that today I found a piece that I had written in October 2017: The crisis of pastoral leadership... That article, in turn, was prompted by a message from a friend, a priest in a relatively strong American diocese, who complained about the sort of directives he received from the chancery. “Everything is administrative, psychological, or sociological—or simply problem-avoidance,” he said. “Very little is religious or truly pastoral, stressing the urgency of the salvation of souls.”